"Nor you, Captain?"
"No," answered Hatteras.
"You have always carried it," said the doctor.
"Well, I haven't got it now—" murmured the old sailor, growing pale.
"Not got it!" shouted the doctor, who could not help trembling. There was no other steel, and the loss of this might bring with it terrible consequences.
"Hunt again!" said the doctor.
Johnson ran to the piece of ice behind which he had watched the bear, then to the place of combat, where he had cut him up; but he could not find anything. He returned in despair. Hatteras looked at him without a word of reproach.
"This is serious," he said to the doctor.
"Yes," the latter answered.
"We have not even an instrument, a glass from which we might take the lens to get fire by means of it!"